


The Hollows of Shells

by lissomelle



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Continuation, F/M, Post-Canon, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 19:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lissomelle/pseuds/lissomelle
Summary: Sean and Puck and the way life unspools before them.





	The Hollows of Shells

**The Hollows of Shells**

  

To no one’s surprise, Sean Kendrick steps across the threshold of the Connollys’ house so many times it isn’t long before he arrives to an extra place already set at the table and a worn groove in the ancient, battered sofa that fits around him.

Today, however, he stands on the front step, shifting from foot to foot. He has a strong urge to knock on the door even though it’s been months since Puck made an impatient noise and told him he could simply walk in. It feels like an old contract rendered null, the new terms uncertain now that he’s arrived with everything he owns in hand — scant though it is.

The competing urge is to check the stable again. Corr looked pleased enough in the stall they’d built for him next to Dove, as content as a _capall_ was capable of being, but countless things could have changed in the five minutes since.

Sean searches for stillness. One breath. Two. He returns to his first impulse and raises a fist. The weathered wood swings open and out of reach first.

“Sean Kendrick, your tea’s chilling in your mug, and Finn’s likely to inhale your November cake after he’s inhaled his,” Puck says matter-of-factly, the corner of her mouth twisting up. “Better come inside.”

He nods. And then he takes her advice.

 

 

 

 

“I assume you’ve stopped going to confession now that you’re openly living in sin,” Peg says the next week, rapping once on the counter. Not judgmental, exactly, just knowing in a way that makes Puck feel entirely exposed.

Puck flushes instantly. “Sean sleeps in Gabe’s old room. We have Finn between us. Father Mooneyham wouldn’t fault me for taking on a lodger.”

“Oh, I didn’t slip from my mother’s womb this morning, Kate Connolly. I know what’s getting lodged.”

“The order, Peg. We do have a _capall uisce_ to feed now.”

“Won’t be but a moment. You stand right there, I know exactly what you need.”

No less than forty minutes later Puck leaves with the meat in a tidily wrapped parcel tucked under her arm, along with a litany of advice and contraceptives, the former in her ear and the latter in a nondescript, brown paper bag. Her blush has only deepened. 

“What happened at the butcher’s?” Sean asks on seeing her face.

“I know more about Peg Gratton now than I’ve ever wanted,” Puck says curtly.

 

 

 

 

(Peg’s not entirely wrong, of course. But neither did Puck lie; inside the house she and Sean never give more than stray touches — a hand on the shoulder, a foot sliding along a shin under the table, a mouth pressed briefly to an innocuous place.

They do the rest in the stable, where they sprawl on a blanket in the hay and bite each other’s shoulders or a piece of their discarded clothing to keep from yelling out and waking Finn. Chaste kisses in the house become sucking at pulse points, at the wrist, beneath the jaw. A hand on the knee keeps sliding up, up, up. The first time, Puck writhes like lightning under Sean’s fingers, one arm wrapped around his shoulders, the other snaking up his neck so she can fist her fingers in his hair, her breath loud in his ears as he thumbs her clit and slides his other fingers through her lips and deep inside where he hooks them. He’s rubbing maddeningly in time with the patterns he’s making with his thumb when she suddenly asks if he’s drawing threes or sevens. A laugh startles out of him. She returns it and then swallows its siblings, her mouth greedy and demanding on his, teeth worrying his lower lip.

For all the mortification of the encounter, Puck admits grudgingly later that Peg’s help becomes indispensable.)

 

 

 

 

The Malvern Yard does not extend a friendly hand for Puck to shake. Curious glances follow her, but more than several narrowed stares and tensed postures do as well. There are small, angry words exchanged about how she’d won the Scorpio Races on a fluke and demanded far more than her due in turn. Suspicion and jealousy circle the murmurs like twin vultures. Sean weighs the thought of saying a word, only briefly.

Then Puck lofts her chin, rolls and straightens her shoulders, and continues striding into the yard without so much as a glance back at him.

He holds his tongue. Hands in pockets, he follows in her unapologetic wake.

 

 

 

 

Gabe sends money, but it’s the letters that Puck covets, and those are scarcer. When he arrives that first Easter after, though, it seems like he fills the house in a way he never did before, his presence fuller for having gone away.

Puck sees it and any remaining fight leaks out of her, punctured by the sight of how obviously and how much happier he is.

When she hugs him at the docks several days later, she gives genuine, fierce wishes for him to be well.

 

 

 

 

Holly returns the next year with a different brightly colored cap in hand and somehow even more impractically smart clothing.

He inquires first after the doctors he sent over, whether they’ve been of any use to Corr. They have, and Sean still insists the debt will be repaid someday, which Holly still waves it off.

“It’s an investment; I have it on good authority the owners here know what they’re doing. I want in on the ground level.”

So he stops by frequently to chat, to loiter around the horses and count colts and fillies that haven’t even been conceived yet. His manner is flip but warm, and what he shrugs off as idle daydreaming is actually excellent business advice. What Puck glimpsed before of why Sean took a liking to him, she begins to see with certainty.

He whistles now, leaning against the stable wall as Sean spreads fresh hay in Dove’s stall. “Sure would be something to see the progeny of not one, but two Scorpio Race winners.” He smiles, all teeth. “Any foal of Corr and Dove’s would be spectacular as well.”

“So are you here for Annie’s hand, or will you return to California alone again?” Puck shoots back.

Holly raises his hands in surrender.

 

 

 

 

They bring Corr to the water often, Dove trailing behind patiently as they lead him to coves and inlets where the ocean can lift his weight from his hooves. The way Corr hobbles on the way there and back never fails to break the quiet of Sean’s face. Puck knows what it means, his allowing her to witness it. What it means for him to trust her grip on Corr’s reins.

The thin murmur of fear, of betraying her parents, still ripples through her each time.

She ignores it and helps hold Corr steady, whispering against his skin _shhhhhh shhhhhhhh_. 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Sean brings Puck and Finn to his father’s house. He’s not sure what he’s searching for or what he hopes they’ll see until Puck draws back dusty curtains and throws open a window; outside, Finn is chasing the brood of hens that have somehow lingered on the property despite there being no one to feed them. Finn waves, and Puck waves back, their grins matching. There’s a low stone wall surrounding the property, and beyond that, the cliffs falling off starkly to the sea.

The house is in disrepair, but the foundation and walls are sturdy. Sean draws back the curtains on another window, swiping away cobwebs. Finn waves to him as well. He lifts a hand in reply, and then settles it on the small of Puck’s back when she comes to stand beside him.

Sean cranes his neck to sweep the scope of the land from this view, approximating its size and shape from what he saw earlier while approaching it. An old idea begins nosing at him again.

(The thought will keep, he decides. It has kept this long.)

 

 

 

 

There are weddings and there are weddings; George and Annie Holly’s is the latter.

The year after Holly’s fourth annual visit and the most lavish ceremony in Thisby’s history, Finn leaves for the mainland to take an engineering scholarship. He’s younger than most and applied on a whim. It is undoubtedly, deservedly his.

(When the letter came, Puck stared at it long and hard, as though she could will the letters into more pleasing shapes, carving out the spine of bitterness twining through the sweet. Gabe had become even rarer after marrying a fair-haired girl named Tessa and buying a house on the mainland. _It’s difficult_ , Puck thought, blinking hard. Imagining herself as the last Connolly on the island.

She has steady employment. They have a roof over their heads. Keeping their bellies full is no longer as threadbare and uncertain an effort as it once was. But then Puck thought of the mill, the docks, the rough hands and stooped backs and lined faces of the men she’s seen on the island all her life.

She could afford to keep her brother; he couldn’t afford to stay.)

The night after Finn leaves, she grabs an extra quilt and curls up on the mattress in his room facing the window nearest the sea. Sean doesn’t say a word, just joins her, wrapping himself around her underneath the covers and pressing his mouth to the nape of her neck exactly the way she likes. His hot breaths roll down her spine, steady, constant. They pace their breathing to the distant crash of the waves until they ease into sleep.

 

 

 

 

A much smaller ceremony follows some months later; the night that follows easily overshadows it.

Sean knows every dip and curve of Puck’s body by now, as she knows every plane and angle of his, and they each take full advantage. Sometimes it’s a slow, leisurely amble taken down a well-trod path, but the first round is always rougher, always a race. She rolls his earlobe between her teeth and he groans, reaching behind her knees to wrap her legs around his waist.

With a wicked grin, Puck flips them over and rolls her hips next, sliding herself along his cock without taking him inside just yet, aware she’s pulled ahead by _at least_ a length. Sean arches, back lifting clear off the bed as he begins panting and instinctively seeking more friction, more heat. But he maintains just enough presence of mind not to be overtaken. Manacling her wrists in his hands, he guides her to sit up on her knees and grip the headboard behind him before pulling her back down to seal his mouth to her cunt.

Now she moans, the best, most gratifying sound he’s ever heard, and he continues drawing the sound out of her with the suction of his lips, the delving flat of his tongue, and she shouts when he adds just a bit of his teeth. He drinks the salty-sweet slickness of her like a man fresh from wandering the desert, grip strong and certain on her thighs even as she bucks and bears down, riding hard; he expects nothing less. When the circling of her hips becomes tighter, he knows she’s close, so close, and that’s when she gasps and stands up, wrenching out of his grasp.

“Don’t you dare, Sean Kendrick,” she says, eyes boring into his as she takes his cock in her hand and sinks onto him completely, burying him to the hilt. “I want you inside me when I finish.”

She’s said it to him countless times before, but it never fails to drag him to the brink in spite of himself.

He’s so hard, and her familiar heat is everywhere, gripping him deep within herself, gripping with her folded legs at his sides. She lowers herself over him and he manages to suck and bite one of her nipples, making her hiss before she captures his mouth with hers, tongue swiping her own taste off of his lips.

Knowing this is as still as she’ll be, he rolls her over and lifts one of her knees to slot himself more securely against her, her clit caught snug against his pubic bone. With his free hand, Sean moves a stray curl of hair out of Puck’s face, like shifting a sheaf of afternoon light. He can see every freckle dusted across her nose, and the open invitation of her parted, swollen lips. She takes in the sight of his mussed, dark hair, the sharp lines of his face. Determined gaze meets determined gaze.

And then they begin to move.

They start with half-thrusts in an even pace, but their movements are much larger before long, his cock pulling out until only the tip is snagged inside and then their hips rushing together to bury him entirely again. Sweat sits in a fine sheen on their bodies, amplifying the slick sounds of their joining. Breathing hard, Puck pushes herself up, refusing to lie back for long. She touches her forehead to Sean’s, gripping the side of his neck as they dig into a new rhythm from this angle, his hands pulling her backside towards him. 

Then he stops. She pulls back slightly to look at him, brows drawing together. He withdraws completely and she groans at the loss of him. Before she can ask, however, he’s turning her body until she is upright on her knees once more with her back flush against his chest; they’re angled to face the floor-length mirror to the side of the bed. He smooths a hand up her stomach before gripping one of her breasts, using his other hand to position himself at her entrance. Making a frustrated sound, she attempts to rock back to take him inside again, but he stops her. Stills her.

In her ear, he whispers, “I want you to see yourself as you are, wild and free. I want you to watch as I pay tribute.”

A fresh wave of blood hits squarely at the center of her, and she feels her own wetness begin to weep out in response. “That sounds faintly blasphemous,” she says, voice no steadier than her legs, which have begun to shake. 

“Judge for yourself,” he says, the rumble of his voice vibrating against her back as he finally allows her to sink onto him once more, his eyes tracking her face in the mirror. She gasps as she watches her body swallow his cock inch by inch, the sight of him disappearing inside her somehow amplifying the feel of it. They glide together effortlessly, rising and falling, and she fists a hand in his hair as he bends to bite her neck. As they pick up speed he continues whispering in her ear, the words a steady stream as his hands reach to knead her breasts and tug her nipples. And all the while, she watches, barely recognizing her own reflection and yet feeling more herself than any other time in her life when she wasn’t astride a horse.

At last, he wraps an arm around her middle and focuses his free fingers on her clit, matching the rhythm by pushing himself up in staccato bursts. They bend forward, his body curling over hers. And still, they move, the pressure building higher and higher. Puck thinks distantly that she might be sobbing every other time Sean fills her. The woman in the mirror is moving without shame or fear or boundaries. And at the same time, with absolute trust.

He pulls her atop him for the closest, roughest thrusts yet, their sounds animal and unyielding, until finally, _finally_ , the tightly wound tension breaks. They peak together.

Later, collapsed together in a mass of twined limbs in the ruined sheets: “Kate Kendrick. Puck Kendrick. What do you wish?” he says into her hair.

Her answer comes easily. “I wish for you and the island and the house and Dove and Corr.”

“You’re meant to wish for things you don’t already have.”

“Ah,” she says. “Then I wish for a loaf of bread. Fresh and warm.”

He nods, skimming a hand up her neck to cup her jaw and turn her towards him so he can kiss her as deeply as possible. “I know just the place.”

 

 

 

 

November arrives on Thisby snarling, the weather closing its jaws on the sky, shuttering the sun. Below, on the beach, riders on their equally vicious mounts wait for the opportunity to claw their way to glory.

Further inland, Puck hefts the kettle from the stove to pour hot water for her tea. She waits for it to steep, thumb rubbing absently along the gold band on her finger. Christmas will come soon, and with it Finn and Gabe and Tessa and her new niece. The house needs a few repairs before then. Dove grazes demurely in her own field, warier than usual of her stable-mate, who woke them all with a scream before the morning had lightened from pitch black to slate grey. It had taken much longer to calm him, the call of the ocean stronger than usual. His body still strains senselessly to join it, magic answering magic.

Now, Corr steps carefully across the pasture outside, back leg crooked. It clearly pains him most now with the turning of the seasons, but it holds his weight. As always Sean isn’t far behind, his hands certain and his mouth whispering into the _capall uisce_ ’s ear, coaxing Corr back when his head twists sharply towards the pull of briny air.

Puck watches, and then she slips on and laces her boots to head outside. Sean automatically angles towards her as she approaches, and she steps into the space he makes for her between him and Corr, fitting her body to both of them.

Beyond the cliffs, the water crashes and drags and retreats. Things pitched into its savage depths roil and twist out of recognizable shape. Things return, sometimes in shattered fragments and sometimes in a new shape altogether.

 

 

 

 

Sean and Corr, Puck and Dove, Sean and Puck. Each pair held together by different sinews, different frames, different private languages. Each sharing the same heart.

Neither of them owns the other; neither is owned by anyone else.

The blood that surges between them, filling their muscles with life, is the choosing.

The standing at forking paths, hearing the call of wild magic howling down the one less tread, and moving without hesitation towards the one that leads home.

 


End file.
